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Often
this space affords an incoming president opportunity
to announce new and exciting initiatives designed
to improve the administration of justice or to enhance
the quality, dignity or diversity of the profession.
This is not that. We have more pressing things, at
least at this moment, than new projects. We must finish
business started and insure the Association's future.
Please consider this page to be sort of state-of-the
Bar-Association message.
In the last few years,
under the able leadership of recent past presidents,
we have accomplished much. We successfully co-drafted
and co sponsored Amendment 80 to the Arkansas Constitution,
providing the framework for an efficient, modern three-tiered
court system for our state. At the same time we significantly
amended the Association's own constitution and bylaws,
creating a workable governance structure, with appropriate
division of authority between the Association's Board
of Governors and its House of Delegates. We have also
reformed the Association's once myriad sections, committees
and task forces to the extent that we are truly a
model for voluntary bar associations nationally.
We have revised our
dues structure to provide the option for members'
cost of membership to be related to their income from
law practice and, thus, their ability to pay. We have
formed and nurtured the Arkansas Bar Commission on
Diversity (ABCD) to explore and enhance opportunities
for women and minority lawyers and, at the same time,
enhance the entire profession by making it more representative,
demographically, of our communities. To date ABCD
has successfully sponsored both a diversity seminar
with nationally important presenters, and a job fair.
Those baby steps, will be followed by others, for
as long as it takes, because diversity is a goal of
ours for the long term.
Though proud of our
accomplishments, we acknowledge that none are completely
finished. We continue to work with the courts and
the Legislature to finish implementing Amendment 80.
This year we will draft and present to the membership
additional minor amendments to our constitution and
bylaws to make our organizational structure even better.
One of those will authorize the House of Delegates
to endorse proposed amendments to the United States
and Arkansas constitutions, thus making it possible
for the Association to react to and effectively weigh
in upon such issues as a liberalization of legislative
term limits, in a timely manner. We will continue
to review our committees with an eye toward combining
any whose work have become duplicative. We will also
look for ways to help each of our sections become
and remain self supporting, self governing subsets
of the Association, each fulfilling its mission to
produce CLE seminars, publications or both on a regular
basis.
Our most recent accomplishment
is the ultimate member benefit, Arkansas VersusLaw.
We are now live online, providing each of you with
a vast law library, accessible twenty-four hours a
day, every day of the year, from any personal computer
with an internet connection. Arkansas VersusLaw is
clearly the finest legal research benefit provided
by any association of lawyers in the world. Today,
with a single search, you can simultaneously find
all of the pertinent authority contained within the
Arkansas Constitution, Code and court rules, decisions
of Arkansas' appellate courts going back to 1900,
Arkansas' Attorney General opinions, every decision
of the Eighth Federal Circuit and recent decisions
of Arkansas Federal District Courts, all with official
citations and pagination. Other included databases
provide the cases and statutes of the remaining forty
nine states and a complete federal appellate court
library. All this has a market value of hundreds,
if not thousands of dollars per year to each of us.
Yet, its cost is included within our modest Association
dues. We will continue to improve this anchor member
benefit with additional Arkansas-specific content.
More importantly, we will help our members become
masters of the computer technology needed to effectively
use it.
Recently, in response
to the need for effective advocacy before the least
experienced legislature in recent Arkansas history,
we chose to employ a full-time lobbyist to help achieve
fair legislative treatment of attorneys, judges and
judicial institutions, and avoid unwarranted and ill
advised alterations to the substantive law of our
state. I am proud of the fine work done by that legislative
advocate, past president Jack McNulty, and by the
Association's Legislation Committee, chaired so ably
by Charles Schlumberger. Despite the fact that the
session was dominated by the hopelessly divisive issue
which bears the misleading label "tort reform,"
we were effective in accomplishing what we set out
to accomplish. The Legislature enacted our entire
package of sponsored legislation. Even more important,
most members of the General Assembly now trust and
respect the Arkansas Bar Association and recognize
that we are selfless protectors of the rule of law,
good law, that is.
I have saved our biggest
challenge for last. It is no secret that the Arkansas
Bar Center, completed in 1973, has reached a crossroads.
That building belongs to our sister organization,
the Arkansas Bar Foundation. The Association leases
its office space from the Foundation. The lease provided
for fair market rental for the space which the Association
occupies, but that rental was established many years
ago. The University of Arkansas, which has leased
the building's north tower since its completion, and
currently pays 100% of the entire building's utility
and security expenses, has no more need to do so.
That arrangement lasts only through this November.
The Foundation and Association are actively exploring
alternatives. At this point no option is off the table.
I love the Arkansas
Bar Center. I often pause in its memorial area where
my own father and grandfather are honored. I can not,
however, close my mind to the possibility that we
may need to move on. At this point we just do not
know. What we do know is that any office space, within
or without our Bar Center, will cost significantly
more than we are accustomed.
Here is the bottom line.
Arkansas VersusLaw is not free to the Association,
but it is an incredible bargain for all of us. Our
expanded legislative advocacy is more expensive than
its less effective alternative, but we rightly rejected
that alternative. We have to provide for the cost
of the Association's office space in today's market.
In other words, we must have additional revenue. We
will look for that revenue everywhere it might be
found. At the same time we will tighten our belts
in those rare areas where there might be another notch
(there are few of those).
One likely source of
new revenue is additional members. We have good reason
to project that Arkansas VersusLaw will help us grow
the Association membership above the benchmark of
5,000 and then retain those members.
Ultimately, though,
we will almost certainly propose the first dues increase
in ten years. I am confident that you will support
your leadership as we thus strive to secure the future
of our Arkansas Bar Association.•
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